Survivor: 1 (33 page)

"In other words, the market's so small it's not worth
pursuing."

"Exactly."

"That's bullshit, and you know it: Detective Orr said. "If
people are being killed-"

"Who's being killed? Some junkie in Harlem who's
been living on the streets for ten years who has no family,
no place to go? 'There's thousands of people like that in
this country with no family, no parents, no support system. They come from foster homes, from institutions,
whatever. Nobody gives a shit about them and you know
it. Whatever family support they might have had is gone
when they get into the streets. Maybe some of them do
have somebody out there who loves them, who wonders
where their son or daughter is, the wayward child who was perhaps a little too rebellious at home and left one
night after a fit of anger. Happens all the time. Not all of
these people get ground up and spit out for the camera;
most of them OD, or they die of hypothermia, or they get
knifed in a mugging or something. Or they die of AIDS.
Some of them do get cleaned up. But there's probably a
small number of them, say one percent, who simply disappear, never to be seen again by anybody."

"You're talking about the kinds of people who fall prey
to serial killers," Detective Orr said.

"Serial killers and hustlers out to make a buck off their
misery." William flipped through the papers on his desk,
searching for something. He found it. "Listen to this. I
printed this off a Web site yesterday. It's an article that details the illegal pornography industry, as well as the child
porn market. And it stated here that something like
seventy-five percent of the kids that wind up in low-budget porn-"

"I'm not interested in statistics, William," Detective Orr
said, his voice becoming curt. "Look, I'm sorry, but
there's nothing much I can go on. We've got a blowup of
the suspect who kidnapped and stole Lisa Miller's
money. That suspect and the Tim Murray character are
being sought for kidnapping and extortion, and that's it.
Same with the Al Pressman character. We can't make a
case for murder until we get more evidence or if one of
them confesses."

William Grecko sighed. His head was pounding. He
needed coffee and he needed it bad. "Okay," he said.
"What's on the agenda for today?"

"Just hang tight. We're still running a vehicle check on
the van. We're also doing some checking on the homeless woman, the one Lisa identified as Alicia. We had a
sketch artist work up a composite based on Lisa's description, and we're putting that over the wire. We're also working with the broadcast news media and some of the
local papers in running the photo. Maybe somebody will
recognize her and we can get a positive ID. If we can find
her, that might answer a lot of questions"

"And what if you don't find her?" William asked. He got
up and walked to the coffeepot, poured himself a cup.
"What if Lisa's story checks out? What if this ex-boyfriend
of Alicia's decides to grow a heart and calls and everything he tells you checks out? Then what?"

'We'll cross that bridge when we get there," Detective
Orr said.

Than was resting his muscular six-foot-six frame on the
king-sized bed, a cup of coffee within easy reach on the
nightstand. The Jets were on, pounding the hell out of
Philly, and he had three hundred bucks on the game. He
was following the game, his mind mostly on the last
twenty-four hours. The reports that had come back from
security had been negative. There was no news of anybody resembling Tim Murray, Al Pressman, or Jeff. Their
descriptions had been given out to all of hotel security,
and the spooks that manned the cameras in the casinos
were also instructed to keep their eyes peeled for them.
So far, nothing.

That was fine with Titan. As long as the Millers stayed
in their room, they were safe. Than or somebody else
from the security team was always on hand, twenty-four
seven, right across the hall. And somebody was always
armed. Than knew that the minute anybody resembling
the suspects walked into the hotel, he or John would get
a call. He'd gotten five calls between yesterday morning
and last night, all of them turning out to be false leads. In
each case, they had dispatched one of their men down
to intercept the suspect and tail them. The report always
came back the same: "Guy looks like the dude in the sketch, but it isn't him. This guy looks like a tourist, and
he's got a wife and five kids trailing along behind him."

So much for that.

Titan yawned and reached for his coffee just as there
was a knock on his door.

He looked at the door, annoyed. John Panozzo had
gone down to the kitchen to bring the Millers their roomservice breakfast three minutes ago. The knock came
again, light yet persistent. Titan swung his legs over the
bed and got up, ambling toward the door.

When he peered through the spyglass he saw a little
old lady, looking forlorn and lost. She looked like she
could be between sixty-five and ninety, and was wearing
a blue plaid dress, had short, wispy white hair, her thin
frame looking both grandmotherly and kind.

Titan opened the door. "Can I help you?"

. The old lady turned to him, her watery blue eyes wide
with confusion. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice wavering.
Her hands were shaking, as if she were a victim of Parkinson's. "I got separated from my ... my church group. We
took separate elevators and..." She licked her lips. She
looked terrified-and no wonder, for an old white lady
like this one, confronting Titan--six foot six, muscular,
shaved head, ebony skin-was probably giving her a
heart attack.".. . I'm lost. Can I ... can I use your phone,
please?"

Titan glanced quickly down the hall. No sign of John.
The old lady trembled beneath his gaze. She clutched a
small white purse in her liver-spotted hands. '!here were
senior citizens' groups staying at the Luxor all the time.
No doubt the group this poor old woman had been with
had neglected to check to see if all of their party were together. Maybe this lady wanted to call a church member
on their cell phone. If so, too fucking bad. "Sorry," he
said. "'IYy the room next door."

"Please!" The woman began to cry, and Than had almost shut the door on her when he paused. You can
break this woman in half by breathing on her. What the
fuck is she gonna do?

Feeling like a shithead for slamming a door in the face
of an old lady, he opened the door. The old woman stood
in the hallway, looking lost and in tears. "Come on in, but
be quick," he said, already hating himself for letting a
crying little old lady get to him.

The old woman sniffled back tears and hobbled in,
her gait wavering. Titan closed the door and followed her
into the room and then bumped into her as she suddenly
stopped and whirled around toward him. He felt her face
brush his chest as he tried to stop the forward momentum of his stride, hoping he hadn't hurt her, and that was
when he felt the pain in his abdomen.

He looked down at his belly, his mind trying to figure
out how a knife had been thrust into his stomach. The
hands holding the handle were small, birdlike, skin wrapping bones. They jerked upward, opening him up, and Titan gasped, looking in wide-eyed horror at the old lady,
who now wore a different expression. Gone was the look
of elderly confusion and meekness and tears; it had
been replaced by a look Titan had seen before only on
people much younger than she-namely, male street
criminals. Her blue eyes reflected a sense of malice as
she grinned. "Fooled you, didn't 1?" She pulled the knife
out of his gut, and Titan felt the lower part of his body
grow numb and wet. His belly exploded with sharp pain.

He staggered back, eyes still on the old woman, than
looked down at the blood spattering on the carpeted
floor. He could feel the blood soaking into his jeans. He
looked back up at the woman, still trying to comprehend
why she had stabbed him when she lashed out again
with expert precision. He saw the blade flash below his field of vision in a delicate swoop, felt a line of pain blaze
across his throat, and then a sudden sense of warm wetness as his shirt was soaked. He opened his mouth to
scream, but his vocal cords refused to take the commands. "That's what I like best about being elderly," the
old woman said, her voice still possessing that same brittle tone but now strong with conviction and purpose.
"You can catch so many of your victims off guard."

Titan made an attempt to lunge at her, to try to get the
knife away from her grasp, just as his body went completely numb. He collapsed to the floor on his knees, his
belly a pit of fire, his throat singing with pain, the scent
of his own blood filling his nostrils, chasing him into
darkness.

Mabel Schneider didn't waste time. She wiped the bloody
knife blade on the comforter, then approached the door,
peering through the eyeglass.

She knew another man was due any minute now with
the room-service tray. The plans they had made earlier
this morning had been hasty, but they were working
beautifully. The best part of it all was they were actually
going to let her take a souvenir! "One of her eyes," she'd
told Rick Shectman over the phone yesterday when he'd
spoken to her about coming out to assist in the abduction of a snuff-film victim. "If that animal you use in those
films doesn't pop them when he sticks his dick in her eye
sockets, I want one of them. Maybe both of them if
they're unruptured. I haven't had boiled eyeballs in a
while."

Shectman had agreed, only on the condition she prepare her meal on this coast. "I can't risk airport security
finding body parts when you board your plane on Friday," he'd said. "If I can't get you the eyes, I'll arrange
somebody to get you a kid. How's that sound?"

"I can get my own children," she'd spat out at him.
"That's easy. Children flock to me because I remind them
of their grandmother. If I can't get her eyes, I'll think of
something else. Maybe you can convince that beast of
yours to fuck me in the ass or something.'

"I'll do what I can," Shectman had said.

Mabel replaced the knife in her handbag, leaving it
open enough so that she could retrieve it quickly for the
next one. She examined herself quickly in the mirror. She
hadn't gotten any of the big man's blood on her, which
was good. She glanced back at him, her eyes lighting on
his chest. It was still. He was deader than shit.

With that, she turned back to the task at hand. She
opened the door slowly, peered out to make sure the corridor was deserted, then slipped out, dosing the door behind her.

Then she waited.

When John Panozzo rounded the curve in the corridor
he saw an old woman wandering the hall, glancing at
the numbers on the doors as if she were searching for
something. He dismissed her from his mind as quickly as
he had taken her in, and pushed the room-service tray
ahead of him, the scent of fresh pancakes and coffee
creating his own pangs of hunger. I didn't realize how
fucking hungry I was until I smelled this shit. Man, that
smells good!

John pushed the tray to Brad and Lisa Miller's room
and knocked on the door. He was wearing the official
uniform of the Luxor room-service employees. John had
thought it was a good idea to have his team dressed as
hotel employees to avoid suspicion. If somebody was out
to get Brad and Lisa Miller, they wouldn't have a due
they were being watched by hotel security as well as the
best private security team in Las Vegas. They would be lulled into a false sense of security. Of course, that
wouldn't work if-

"Excuse me. Sir?"

It was the old woman. She had noticed him and approached him tentatively. John glanced at her. She
looked lost. He turned to the door as he heard footsteps
approach.

"Sir?" Her voice was more persistent, wavering on brittleness and tears,

He turned back to her just as he heard the deadbolt
being thrown open. "Just a minute, okay?"

He turned back to the door as Brad Miller opened it.
"Room service," John said, pushing the cart past Brad.

"Hey." he heard Brad exclaim. John pushed the tray to
the center of the room, taking only quick notice that the
TV was on and Lisa Miller was still in bed, lying on her
right side, her back away from the door. He turned
around and was surprised to see that the old woman had
followed him into the room.

"Uh, can I help you, miss?" John said, stepping toward
the old woman.

"I'm lost," she said, her voice sounding as brittle as
dead leaves. "My church group lost me on the way to the
elevator. Do you have a phone I could use?"

Brad was still standing by the open door, obviously
stunned that the old woman had blundered past him
into his room. John took a step toward the old lady, his
training taking over. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I'm going to have
to ask you to leave."

"Please!" she screeched, and then she started crying.
She clutched her purse in her brittle-looking hands, and
John reached her just as Brad closed the door. "Let her
use the phone, John. She's not gonna hurt anything."

John was just turning to answer Brad when he felt the
knife punch into his throat.